Race Organisers Join Forces for Post-Covid Season
By Paul Lawrence
Three leading organisers of historic racing have pledged to work together in re-scheduling events over the later part of the 2020 season. The Historic Sports Car Club, Masters Historic Racing and French-based HVM Racing will collaborate on re-scheduled dates and races to help ensure the best deal for historic racers once the 2020 season is able to get underway.
Co-operation on re-scheduled dates, shared race meetings and guest races at each other’s events are all options that are currently being discussed. The aim will be to create viable race meetings that offer as many racers as possible the chance to race at leading venues this year.
Subject to approval for racing to resume, the later months of 2020 could be very crowded as promoters try to re-schedule events postponed from earlier in the year into what is already a busy time for historic racing. The HSCC, Masters and HVM aim to collaborate on events, with shared race meetings a real possibility.
Andy Dee-Crowne of the HSCC said: “This is good for the sport and makes good business sense and I’d like to thank Ron Maydon at Masters and Laurent Vallery-Masson at HVM for joining us in this process.
“No one can yet be sure when racing will be allowed to restart and we can’t yet predict what grid sizes will be like. While there will clearly be pent-up demand to go racing, we also recognise that some competitors will be focussed on business recovery after the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic. We want to make sure that we can all accommodate those who want to go racing again.”
It is possible that racing in France could re-start earlier than in the UK and HVM’s dates at major French tracks, subject to travel restrictions, may be attractive to some UK-organised race categories.
In the UK, as an example, both the HSCC and Masters have had to postpone two-day race meetings at Donington Park scheduled for June. Given the likely calendar pressures of re-organising later season dates, a consolidated joint event over a longer weekend may be a viable alternative.
